SO, last Wednesday morning, August 12th, I went to the hospital at 9:00 AM to have an ECV, where the doctor attempts to reposition a breech baby into a head-down position. I had an epidural because I heard the procedure could hurt like the dickins. In order to have this procedure, you need ample amniotic fluid around the baby and the baby needs to be smaller than 7lbs. The doctor had said if Claire was willing to move, it would take under 10 minutes, and if she wasn't going to move, he wouldn't force her. Well, the procedure worked like a charm and took less than 2 minutes. Geoff described it as watching the doctor manipulate a football inside of a basketball.
All that was left was to monitor the baby for signs of stress for 2 hours and then we would go home and induce at 39 weeks. Well, there were signs of stress from the getgo. Claire's heart rate drops came fairly frequently for awhile, then slowed to about once an hour. Eventually the doctor left me on the monitors but told me that he would be back and he had decided that we would need to see six straight hours with no heart rate dips. This was not the most welcome news as by the time we were at that point, it was after lunch and I hadn't eaten since the evening before.
My doctor was done with his surgeries and back at the main doctor's office and the on-call doctor was set to check on me. Geoff and his mom and I were sitting around trying to ignore the baby's heart monitor. At some point I thought that my water may have broken (a potential side effect of the repositioning of the baby). A nurse came in and confirmed the presence of amniotic fluid and it looked like we were going to induce. The on-call doctor then came in to run some other tests and couldn't confirm that my water had indeed broken, even though the ultrasound was showing less amniotic fluid than had been there that morning. So they had me walk for awhile in hopes of having more conclusive test results. Still it seemed that he couldn't confirm that my water had broken and said they would likely be sending me home.
At this point, I was pretty weary. Geoff's mom went on home since it looked like that was where we'd be heading and I laid in bed waiting for my doctor to drop in and I just cried for awhile. All I could think was that I was sure my water had broken and that I was going to end up having to have another epidural if they sent me home and I wasn't looking forward to that at all. But when my doctor came over he checked the ultrasound and said the fluid levels were so much lower than they had been that morning that it was absolutely time to induce.
The induction occurs in two parts and the first takes 12 hours, so we put out of town grandparents on alert that we would be beginning labor on the morning of the 13th. Part one of the induction (pre-labor) began and had immediate strong results, causing contractions that were really not what we were expecting at the time. I pretty much blacked out during all of this and remember nothing from about 7:30pm when the contractions started until around 2:30 in the morning when my water really broke and the doctors came rushing in to prep me for an emergency c-section.
Geoff was able to come in for the c-section which was truly over in minutes. We had to bump another couple out of our way for the surgery - they had been in our prepared childbirth class. Claire came out small but healthy - they had both of us briefly - very briefly - on oxygen, but other than needing a little time in the warmer, she was alert, healthy, and ready to nurse as soon as I recovered from being sewn up. I have been recovering really well from the surgery, and am so glad to be home with my baby and husband. It was a trying and frustrating day, both the worst and best day I've ever had. Worst for all of the scary and frustrating moments, all the fatigue, lack of food, pain, etc, and best for the birth of my daughter.
No comments:
Post a Comment